Direct democracy now! Block the reforms in the streets and build Popular Power!

Brazil is experiencing a political earthquake, laying bare the rottenness of the country's elites and further weakening the ties that sustain them in power. The orchestrated operation that enabled the recording between President Michel Temer and the owner of JBS, the largest meat company in the world, changes the balance of forces in the country and pours petrol on the political and social crisis. With the political instability it is more difficult for the government to mobilize its base and move forward with the Labor Rights and Pension Reforms, the biggest attacks on the oppressed class. But this is no reason to celebrate and we must not be complacent about these struggles. Now is the time to intensify the struggle, to generalize the mobilizations with the blockading of streets, work stoppages building towards the general strike to block the social cuts and reforms. We must deepen democracy, but direct democracy, where workers in their places of work, study and residence decide the direction of the country. We can not accept the crumbs from those at the top, we need to impose a popular program of social rights built and decided by the people. We need to build direct democracy – outside the agreements of those at the top – in neighborhoods, in slums, in villages, in land and housing occupations, in factories, in schools.

The coup that brought down the PT/PMDB’s fourth mandate in the presidency made it possible to begin a successful first round of harsh anti-people measures at an overwhelming pace, with broad support in Congress and in the media, notably the Globo television network. Temer approved the high school education reform, the PEC spending cap bill, the outsourcing bill, privatizations and several more attacks – initiated during the PT government itself. Decades of bureaucratization of struggles by the large trade unions centrals and the practice of co-opting leaders of big social movements by the PT helped, and is still helping, to demobilize the people and impede the generalization of resistance against these attacks. Despite this, other sectors such as high school students and indigenous people are breathing new life into the social struggle. The growth of popular dissatisfaction with Temer’s labour and pension reforms manifested itself with great impact in the streets, in the mobilizations by the general strike of 15 and 28 April, forcing the coup makers to back down with their proposals.

With more than 90% rejection, the Temer government doesn't even have the legitimacy to sustain this false democratic system. This serves only to maintain the businessmen and political class robbing and killing the people. Lula and Dilma’s government of class conciliation was a government for businessmen and the rich, with a few crumbs for the poor. And the innumerable accusations of corruption only make evident the disgusting relationship of favoritism that exists between big business and the state. The cases of corruption are not isolated incidents but what makes the wheels of the state and private sector turn. That is, the representative system does not serve the interests of the people but those of capitalism, so that the political and business class can advance their projects.

That is why “magic solutions” like privatization, outsourcing, attacks on workers’ rights only serve to make businessmen profit more. Attacks on social rights, attacks on indigenous people and their territories, on peasants and the landless, on women, LGBTQIs, the genocide of blacks and residents of slums and poor neighborhoods and the criminalization of poverty are the same. They are all measures and policies for the right wing and conservative sectors, businessmen, landowners, bankers to impose their ideology, profit more, concentrate more wealth and exploit the people more. Businessmen, like João Dória, are no different from other politicians, they are enemies of the people. If professional politicians are in disrepute the justice system tries to assert legitimacy with anti-corruption operations in order to increase its power in the state structure. The heads of the Judiciary, Federal Police and Public Prosecutor’s Office, with sectors directly aligned to the United States, have massive support from the Globo network to accumulate power with dangerously authoritarian biases. It is necessary to repudiate this escalation and to avoid any illusion in salvation by bourgeois justice.

The old media plays a crucial role in the tangle of ruling class interests. The Globo network, which supported the Parliamentary Judicial Media Coup, engineered and legitimized the current coup and has now placed itself on the stronger side, with the Attorney General’s Office (PGR, Procuradoria-Geral da República), for the departure of Temer. The purpose is to recuperate the conditions to approve the reforms with the election of a new president by indirect elections. We can not underestimate the role that communication giants play in the ideological field. Globo’s turn against Temer does not signify any advance for the popular camp. In the discrediting of professional politicians it discards old bets, like Aécio Neves, and orients its agenda by the worldwide tendency to leverage the candidacies of personalities seemingly “from outside” the political-partisan camp. They seek to put in place subjects directly from the business community (Doria, Meirelles), the judiciary (Nelson Jobim, Carmem Lúcia, Joaquim Barbosa), or even the entertainment media (Luciano Huck). It is strategic to advance in the discrediting of the old media and to strengthen the demand for the democratization of communication with restrictions to the power of these companies, as well as to strengthen popular means of communication.

It is still necessary to question the reason for the denunciations only arriving at this moment. Even though they have discarded some politicians and triggered some instability, the action shows loyalty in the agreements between state and capital. The criterion is economic and there is an interest in defending a company that recently faced the Carne Fraca (“Weak Meat”) operation; an action that, if on the one hand has demonstrated the terrible conditions in which our food is produced, first served the US interests of weakening a competitor in the international dispute of the meat market. It should be noted that it was the PT/PMDB government that fattened JBS up through BNDES with millions of dollars, transforming the company into one of the largest in the world.

From Below and to the Left, Direct Democracy now!

The fact is that the demand that brought many people onto the streets in this 1 year of Temer government could become reality: Michel Temer’s departure from the presidency of the republic. And we ask ourselves: what now? What is the next step? We know that with the coup makers weakened and their parliamentary base oscillating, there is a lack of conditions to continue the process of labor and pension reform. Now it is urgent to generalize the struggle against the reforms and to take back the rights that were rolled back by coup makers from the past and the present conjuncture, the PT/PMDB. In addition to blocking the reforms we need to build a project that makes the rich pay for the cost of the crisis and that recognizes the political, business and media elite as enemies of the people. Big companies like JBS owe the government more than 400 billion, about three times the amount they contribute to the false social security deficit.

Only the organization of the people and pressure in the streets can prevent the reforms and attacks on social rights. Nothing from parliament will go in that direction. We have to prevent businessmen and the political elite from making their summit agreements and coups in order to proceed with their project. Mobilization and popular pressure are necessary and urgent now to block the reforms from moving forward amid this instability. They are necessary pressures to impose a popular agenda on the government, even in the case of a direct election. And the mobilization of the people today is urgent to prevent the worst case scenario, which is a suspension of the elections in 2018 through a political-military intervention and the persecution of the combative sectors of the left.

The electoral left demands rights now so that the Presidency of the Republic and lulismo (Lula-ism) can appear, as in previous years, managing to present itself as a supposed popular exit in the middle of the earthquake of the political crisis. We can not deceive ourselves! We have affirmed and continue affirming: we must overcome petismo (PT-ism) and all its inheritance on the left. The belief that Lula will have to deal with the crisis and bring about improvements in the living conditions of those at the bottom of society does not hold up. An election of Lula would only represent another class pact with the bourgeoisie and the bosses, in even more withdrawn terms than in previous years.

The important thing at the moment is that the struggle has to be from below and in the streets in order to advance a popular rights program! Promote organization, mobilization against the pension and labor rights reform, and for the construction of a popular project based on class independence. Catalyze popular dissatisfaction in revolt and advance in grassroots struggles. Do not allow yourself to be carried away by immediate solutions, in this process of reorganization of the left and summit agreements to save bourgeois democracy. There is no rabbit in a top hat, the way out is to build popular organization in the neighborhoods, in schools, in workplaces with the poor and oppressed people. We must demand the suspension of all the anti-people measures initiated by the PT government and continued by the coup leader Temer.

The moment is unfavorable for us oppressed, but the crisis and the dispute between the elites open up space for other projects. We need to use the dissatisfaction to delegitimize this system and channel the social struggle.

Direct Democracy now!
For the suspension of all anti-people measures!
Against the fiscal adjustment and rights cuts!
Away with Globo coup makers!
Build Popular Power against austerity and repression!

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